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In Praise of Joe Biden

I rise to defend Joe Biden, who is being attacked for his verbosity during the Alito confirmation hearings. Some have concluded that Biden is a blowhard, though I assert he is thoughtful, just at Wagnerian length.

After years of study, I have come to recognize that it is wrong to regard Biden's committee room interventions as questions. They are senatorial arias of immense emotional range. At times he will ascend to heights of rage and contempt; at other times he will wander like Lear through the desolation of undesirable policies.

At one moment, he will lean in toward the witness like a late-night drinking buddy and share some intimate truth. At the next moment -- and this is when he is at his best -- he will play the beaten warrior, battered but unbowed. In this twilight mood, his voice grows husky and his shoulders slump. He knows that some nominee or bill is about to roll over him, but like the last Spartan at Thermopylae, he registers his noble objection before succumbing manfully to the inexorable will of fate.

Then he flashes his jarring grin, which says that we are all friends despite the circumstances of our disagreement.

Biden's emotive vitality is his greatest weapon in the war all successful politicians must wage, the war against the public self. As the great Meg Greenfield once observed, prominent Washingtonians have two identities: their genuine self -- the soft, complicated person they once were -- and the public self, the broadly drawn pastiche of positions, poses, party affiliations, life-story clichés and ethnic ties that are presented to voters every few years.

The challenge of political life is to prevent the genuine self from being extinguished by the public image.

There is no environment more perilous for that genuine self than the United States Senate. Consider how senators live every day. They are surrounded by clouds of deferential, ear-whispering aides whose own attitudes towards their bosses are a mixture of fervent love and Oedipal contempt. They are buffeted by swarms of reporters who are obsequious in person and then condescending in print.

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They are puffed by endless praise and bruised by endless criticism. They begin their day before dawn, with every minute scheduled by their worker bee helpers. They go to offices with power walls adorned with plaques, prizes, football helmets and other offerings that have been left to them in the way ritual sacrifices were once left on the altar of a tribal god or chieftain.

Wide-eyed home state folks click their pictures with disposable cameras. Lobbyists stop by with their superior suits and their beneficent causes. At midmorning the senator will be driven to a think tank to address an audience of wonks who know his subject a hundred times better than he does. Then he will drop by a committee hearing where photographers will take pictures of him listening portentously. Then he will be whisked to the floor to make a statement, pausing only to share flattery with an esteemed colleague.

It's no wonder some senators turn into bloated Hindenburg versions of themselves. It's no wonder that some members enter the Senate dining room as if accompanied by the blare of trumpets. It's no wonder some suffer from logorrhea dementia, the malady of being driven insane by the act of talking too much.

But despite occasional appearances, Joe Biden is not this way. It is true the man has no speed bumps between his brain and his mouth. But this only makes him more candid. And by making candor the core of his self-image, he has preserved the ability to think independently and to be honest with himself. Some public figures are no longer able to create their own beliefs, and just believe those talking points it is useful for them to believe. But Biden, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes profane, always overlong, is still a real person, and a genuinely nice one -- and he has been in the Senate since age 30, almost his whole adult life.

The Senate is filled with bright, charismatic, ambitious people who somehow became caught in the waiting room to greatness. But it is my favorite Washington institution because of personalities so electric they have resisted the pressure to become marbleized. There is the kind and decent Lugar, the joyful warrior McCain, the unprepossessing Graham, the courageous Lieberman and the graceful Sununu and Obama, among others.

Biden is one of those people who make the Senate interesting and even serious. He wouldn't have the same facility for talking honestly if he didn't give himself so much marathon-length practice.